A notable exception was Subaru, which for a long time had the Israeli market nearly to itself but was barred from selling in the Arab world.3
Every government of the Arab League established an official Office of the Boycott, which enforced the primary boycott, monitored the behavior of secondary and tertiary targets, and identified new prospects. According to Christopher Joyner of George Washington University, “Of all the contemporary boycotts, the League of Arab States’ boycott against Israel is, ideologically, the most virulent; organizationally, the most sophisticated; politically, the most protracted; and legally, the most polemical.”4
The boycott has at times taken on unusual targets. In 1974, the Arab League blacklisted the entire Baha’i faith because the Baha’i temple in Haifa is a successful tourist attraction that has created revenue for Israel. Lebanon forbade the showing of the Walt Disney production Sleeping Beauty because the horse in the film bears the Hebrew name Samson.5
In such a climate, it is natural that young Israelis seek both to get away from an Arab world that has ostracized them and to defy such rejectionism—as if to say, “The more you try to lock me in, the more I will show you I can get out.”

…

This former flight engineer went on to found seventeen start-ups and develop over three hundred patents. So, in a sense, Yossi Gross should thank France. Charles de Gaulle hardly intended to help jump-start the Israeli technology scene. Yet by convincing Israelis that they could not rely on foreign weapons systems, de Gaulle’s decision made a pivotal contribution to Israel’s economy. The major increase in military R&D that followed France’s boycott of Israel gave a generation of Israeli engineers remarkable experience. But it would not have catalyzed Israel’s start-up hothouse if it had not been combined with something else: a profound interdisciplinary approach and a willingness to try anything, no matter how destabilizing to societal norms.
CHAPTER 12
From Nose Cones to Geysers
If most air forces are designed like a Formula One race car, the Israeli Air Force is a beat-up jeep with a lot of tools in it. . . .

…

Thousands of workers in Israel’s tech scene have already lost their jobs, and many tech companies have shifted to four-day workweeks to avoid further layoffs.2 In the absence of new financing, many Israeli start-ups have been forced to close.
In addition to an overdependence on global venture capital, Israeli companies are also overdependent on export markets. Over half of Israel’s GDP comes from exports to Europe, North America, and Asia. When those economies slow down or collapse, Israeli start-ups have fewer customers. Because of the Arab boycott, Israel does not have access to most regional markets. And the domestic market is far too small to serve as a substitute.
Israeli companies will also find it harder to negotiate exits—like Given Imaging’s IPO on the NASDAQ or Fraud Sciences’ sale to PayPal—which are often the means by which Israeli entrepreneurs and investors ultimately make their money. A global slowdown will coincide with fewer IPOs and acquisitions.

The militant labor movement was very significant. One of the lasting achievements is a substantial boost in the opportunities for labor organizing which had been crushed under the previous regime. Again, that’s the kind of topic that you are not supposed to talk about here, but it’s important.
FB: What do you make of the American Studies Association passing a resolution endorsing an academic boycott of Israel? How important do you think that is?
NC: Well, that’s what I had in mind when I was bringing up the Jenin fiasco. It’s very much like it. It was not prepared; it was guaranteed to create a backlash that would overwhelm it. It was not thought out properly. The result is that there has been a shift from concern with Israeli crimes and US support for them to the issue of academic freedom. Very much like what happened in 2002.

…

FB: . . . still, from what I understand, and from what I have read, it looks like most of them are indeed complicit in the occupation and in Israeli crimes. So even though I agree that more studies will be useful and are important, I do think that the educational process is happening during and after a resolution like the ASA one is passed. The debate in the US is on academic freedom, but people are also asking questions like why is the ASA, a respected institution, asking to boycott Israel? This question might not have been raised if the resolution had not been passed.
IP: I think what Noam is trying to say, if I understood correctly, at least this is what I think, is that it is the other way around. You have not yet won the argument that Israel, as a political entity, is problematic. You have won the argument that Israel should not occupy the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, but that is something else.

…

The striking case in the USA is the way the Cuban role in South Africa has been suppressed. To this day, you read articles by scholars that are suppressing it. These are things you have to deal with.
This conversation between Noam Chomsky, Ilan Pappé, and Frank Barat was recorded on January 17, 2014, and has been condensed and edited.
* A study by the Alternative Information Center from 2009, “Academic Boycott of Israel,” can be found online.
Chapter Four
The Future
FB: Is an Israeli Spring possible?
NC: For the last ten years especially, there has been a very strong shift in Israeli mentality and politics toward the right, nationalism, toward more extremism, there is a kind of circling the wagons mentality which was also true in South Africa toward the end. “The world hates us because they are all anti-Semitic so we will do what we want.”

Their accountability for rape is surely a
matter of degree, as is the accountability for terrorism of those who cheer
the terrorists, make martyrs of them, encourage their own children to
become terrorists, or expect to benefit from terrorism. There is nothing
morally wrong with holding such complicitors accountable so long as the
consequences imposed on them are proportional to their complicity.
The U.S.-led economic sanctions against Iraq, Libya, and Cuba are collective punishments imposed on large populations for the deeds of their
leaders. So were the sanctions and boycotts imposed against Israel by the
Arab League. Israel’s policy of demolishing the homes of terrorists or
those who harbor them is a soft form of collective punishment directed
against the property of those who are deemed somewhat complicit. That
it occasionally has an impact on innocent people detracts from its moral
purity, but to a considerably lesser degree than widespread economic sanctions directed against entire nations.

…

If the United States
were ever to become as even-handed as the international community has
been, it would surely encourage continuing aggression against the Jewish
state. It would also be morally wrong. Even-handedness toward those
whose actions are not morally equivalent is an immoral and dangerous
form of artificial symmetry.
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Should Universities
Divest from Israel and
Boycott Israeli Scholars?
THE ACCUSATION
Israel’s actions, more than those of any other nation, warrant divestment
and boycott.
THE ACCUSERS
“We the undersigned . . . call on MIT and Harvard to divest from Israel.”
(Noam Chomsky, signing a petition for divestment)
“Divestment is wrong in principle. . . .
“Divestment is ‘unprincipled’ and ‘it would be loved by Alan Dershowitz, Lawrence Summers and Marty Peretz who are delighted to have
more atrocities and violence against Palestinians.’

…

., the Iranian threat to annihilate
Israel)
• Political anti-Semitism
The denial of the Jewish people’s right to self-determination
The de-legitimization of Israel as a state
The attribution to Israel of all the world’s evils—Israel as the “poisoner of international wells”
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THE CASE FOR ISRAEL
211
• Ideological anti-Semitism (which surpasses the Zionism = Racism
rhetoric) to “Nazify” Israel
• Theological anti-Semitism. The convergence of Islamic anti-Semitism
and Christian “replacement” theology, drawing on classical hatred of
Jews
• Cultural anti-Semitism. The mélange of attitudes, sentiments, and
discourse of “fashionable” salon intellectuals
• Economic anti-Semitism, which goes beyond the Arab boycott of
Israel to include extra-territorial application of restrictive covenants
against countries trading with Israel
• Holocaust denial
• Racist terrorism against Jews
• Denial to Israel of equality before the law in the international arena.
The singling out of Israel for differential and discriminatory treatment in the international arena
Whether or not one accepts each of these sets, there can be little doubt that
some of these must be included in any comprehensive catalog of bigotry.

‘It allows Israel to turn its back on the problem, literally for those on the coast, and pretend it is not there. The Barrier is mile after mile after mile of self-delusion.’
The more I think about it, the more the layers of irony begin to pile up: as Israelis turn their back on the West Bank, so the rest of the world starts to be evermore drawn to it. As Israel turns further from the Middle East, looking instead to the West, so the calls for boycotts on Israel grow even louder from Europe.
This Barrier does not only isolate the West Bank.
Tiredness gets the better of us in the restaurant and we leave while the place is still full, and before Cherie Blair pops in for a nightcap. Outside we say our final goodbyes and promise to keep in touch. Phil and I are staying in East Jerusalem before flying home tomorrow, and the hotel has the harp music playing when we walk in past the overgrown plants and scruffy easy chairs.

…

Thanks to Yasmin Khan, John Hillary and all at War on Want, Jews for Justice for Palestinians, Israeli Committee against House Demolition and Linda, IMET 2000 and Professor Colin Green, Palestinian Solidarity Campaign, Stop the Wall, Abdefattah Abusrour, Tony Pletts, Jeni Dixon, Ashifa Farooq, Donna Baranski-Walker, Amanda Telfer, Haaver Ellingsen, Nick Hildyard, John McGhee and all the support from the Regional and National Fire Brigade Union, Combatants of Peace, Veronica Pasteur and Fairtrade Foundation, Atif, Zaytoun, Felix Gonzales, Mark Brown and friends, Alternative Information Centre, Dror Etkes, B’Tselem Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme, International Solidarity Movement, everyone who helped from the Christian Peacemaker Team, Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme, Machon Watch, The Red Crescent. And Frank.
Keren, Bipasha and Nicky. Mike and Martin and Janet at Roast Beef Productions. Amy at Phil Mac’s. Jake, Liz, Ali, Sarah and Rae at Ebury Press.
As usual thanks to JL, CB and IJ … No! You’re the best!
appendix
FULL TEXT OF THE Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions CALL IN 2005
Palestinian Civil Society
Calls for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel until it Complies with International Law and Universal Principles of Human Rights
9 July 2005
One year after the historic Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) which found Israel’s Wall built on occupied Palestinian territory to be illegal; Israel continues its construction of the colonial Wall with total disregard to the Court’s decision. Thirty-eight years into Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian West Bank (including East Jerusalem), Gaza Strip and the Syrian Golan Heights, Israel continues to expand Jewish colonies.

…

In light of Israel’s persistent violations of international law; and given that, since 1948, hundreds of UN resolutions have condemned Israel’s colonial and discriminatory policies as illegal and called for immediate, adequate and effective remedies; and given that all forms of international intervention and peace-making have until now failed to convince or force Israel to comply with humanitarian law, to respect fundamental human rights and to end its occupation and oppression of the people of Palestine; and in view of the fact that people of conscience in the international community have historically shouldered the moral responsibility to fight injustice, as exemplified in the struggle to abolish apartheid in South Africa through diverse forms of boycott, divestment and sanctions; and inspired by the struggle of South Africans against apartheid and in the spirit of international solidarity, moral consistency and resistance to injustice and oppression; we, representatives of Palestinian civil society, call upon international civil society organisations and people of conscience all over the world to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel similar to those applied to South Africa in the apartheid era. We appeal to you to pressure your respective states to impose embargoes and sanctions against Israel. We also invite conscientious Israelis to support this Call, for the sake of justice and genuine peace.
These non-violent punitive measures should be maintained until Israel meets its obligation to recognise the Palestinian people’s inalienable right to self-determination and fully complies with the precepts of international law by:
1) Ending its occupation and colonisation of all Arab lands and dismantling the Wall;
2) Recognising the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality; and
3) Respecting, protecting and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN resolution 194.

“By an Israeli activist, I mean that I am rooted in my place as an Israeli,” twenty-three-year-old Matan Cohen noted in a hip coffee shop in Jaffa. “I understand that this means that I have a certain responsibility in the situation. I can’t shy away from the power dynamics which exist between us but at least I am trying to work through them.” Cohen is a prominent Israeli activist who has most recently been involved in international boycott campaigns of Israel. Early in the work of the AATW, he lost his eye after being hit directly with a rubber bullet fired by an Israeli border police officer.
At the core of the power dynamics of which Cohen speaks is the dominant ideology in Israeli society, Zionism. For the majority of activists in AATW, Zionism is not an issue they devote any time to. Action occupies their minds. According to Mairav Zonszein, a journalist and translator living in Tel Aviv and a member of the joint struggle group Ta’ayush, Zionism is not a topic spoken about often among activists – but Jewish identity is.

…

For example, Israeli academic and activist Jeff Halper advocates a South African-style anti-Apartheid struggle against Zionism.12 Others endorse the same strategy in the struggle to end the occupation, without explicitly calling for a unitary state.13 While such a movement could be a way forward, there is nothing comparable at the popular level calling for a one-state solution. The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel may be one such pathway towards the goal, but it is as yet still too diffuse and ineffective. In any case, as the veteran peace activist, Uri Avnery, points out, the two situations are so different that such an approach is doomed.14 The South African regime had few international supporters, whereas Israel commands the unstinting support of Jewish communities worldwide and the near unconditional support of the world’s only superpower, the United States.

…

What is needed now for there to be a Jewish state that is not a post-Zionist Israel, but rather a post-Israel Zionism. Maybe that sort of Zionism can find expression in a liberal nationalism that is both “Jewish and democratic”.
About the contributors
OMAR BARGHOUTI is an independent Palestinian researcher, commentator and human rights activist committed to upholding international law and universal human rights. He is a founding member of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI)and the Palestinian Civil Society Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel. He holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in electrical engineering from Columbia University, NY, and a master’s in philosophy from Tel Aviv University. He is the author of BDS: The Global Struggle for Palestinian Rights. His commentaries and interviews have been featured on CNN, BBC, and in the Guardian, Al Jazeera, Huffington Post, Russia Today, Al-Ahram, and Democracy Now!.

Tauris, 2001), 16-46.
3 United Nations Archives, UNSCOP Verbatim Report in United Nations General Assembly Files, Second Session, August-November 1947.
4 See Ali Abuminah, One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse (New York: Holt McDougal 2007); Ghada Karmi, Married to Another Man: Israel’s Dilemma in Palestine (London: Pluto Press, 2007); Joel Kovel, Overcoming Zionism: Creating a Single Democratic State in Israel/Palestine (London: Pluto Press, 2007); and Jamil Hilal, ed., Where Now for Palestine? The Demise of the Two-State Solution (London: Zed Books 2007).
5 The Web site of that campaign is the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic & Cultural Boycott of Israel, www.pacbi.org.
6 See Meron Benvisiti, “The Binationalism Vogue,” Haaretz, April 30, 2009. This was written as a response to the March 2009 Boston conference declaration.
7 The Italian journalist and writer Paolo Barnard is the senior political correspondent of RAI and he posted seven short clips titled “Palestine-Israel: the Missing Narratives,” on YouTube in May 2009.
8 Shimon Peres, Now and Tomorrow (Tel-Aviv: Mabat Books, 1978), 20.
9 See David Landau, “Maximum Jews, Minimum Arabs,” Haaretz, November 13, 2003.

But the 1980s saw a flourishing of NGOs and university study modules that investigated gay issues, thus adding to the sense of pluralism in the local academy and society.
Unfortunately this new openness was later used by mainstream academia to deflect any attempt to criticise it for complicity in the occupation or the oppression of the Palestinians. The Israeli academic establishment attempted to fend off calls for an academic boycott of Israel earlier in the 2000s by turning to gay and lesbian lobbying groups around the world – a move that was later dubbed ‘pinkwashing’. Broadcasting Tel Aviv as the most gay-friendly city in the West (a title it wins frequently) was one of the main campaigns supported by the government in order to undercut the boycott. Quite a few groups, including some powerful ones in the United States, refused to partake in the ‘Brand Israel’ campaign and were fully aware that while life may go on happily for gays in Tel Aviv, a few kilometres away millions of people are incarcerated in the huge megaprison of the West Bank and the ghetto of Gaza.

…

In that area, Israeli law would be imposed, hence the need to prepare a racist infrastructure for the future, expanded, and possibly final State of Israel.
Post-Zionists were also targeted. The most important law in this respect is the 2011 Law for Prevention of Damage to State of Israel Through Boycott, which defined as a criminal act, bearing the risk of lengthy imprisonment, any support for a boycott of Israel or for an action abroad considered to constitute delegitimisation. To this was added more recently a proposal for a law that would limit foreign funding for human and civil rights organisations in the state. As yet it has not passed.
Finally the legal reality in Israel reflects the ideological stance of the powers that be. Past ambiguities, remorse, and debates about the idea of Israel – all are gone, replaced by the joy felt on Independence Day by Shavit and most other senior journalists.

Fed chairman Arthur Burns brokered a deal with the banks, releasing aggregate deposit figures for Middle East states. Of $14.5 billion in deposits by the OPEC states, 78 percent resided in six banks—Morgan Guaranty, Bank of America, Citibank, Chase, Manufacturers Hanover, and Chemical.
Senator Church proved correct in worrying that petrodollars would enlist the political allegiance of bankers in disturbing ways. The sheiks wanted to use letters of credit as a way of enforcing compliance with the Arab boycott of Israel. Under this arrangement, banks had to certify that goods being exported to the Middle East didn’t originate in Israel or with blacklisted American companies, didn’t bear the Star of David, and wouldn’t travel aboard Israeli planes or ships. In 1976, the American Jewish Congress singled out Morgan Guaranty and Citibank for loyally executing this dirty work and cited their “pivotal role in the implementation of the Arab boycott.”7 Morgan Guaranty executed 824 letters of credit including the language of the boycott, although they protested and successfully expunged the offensive language in two dozen cases.

…

The newly Arabized Morgan Grenfell advised Qatar and Dubai on investment strategy, entered into a joint venture with Jordan’s Arab Bank, opened offices in Egypt and Iran, and formed a link with France’s Compagnie Financiere de Suez, whose subsidiary, Banque de l’lndochine, had branches throughout the Middle East.
As its Middle East fame spread, Morgan Grenfell found at its doorstep people who required inside knowledge of Arab finance or introductions into Persian Gulf diplomatic circles. In 1975, it drew a suitor who demanded an ironclad guarantee of confidentiality—Henry Ford II. Emissaries from Ford Motor posed a maddening riddle: how could the company, blacklisted by the Arab boycott, operate in both Israel and Egypt? This seemed the political equivalent of squaring the circle.
Ford Motor was a pariah in the Middle East. From 1950 to 1966, it had operated an assembly plant in Alexandria, Egypt. Then an Israeli Ford dealer got permission to assemble Fords in Israel from imported parts. Despite the absence of direct Ford investment or personnel in Israel, the Arab League threatened a regional boycott of Ford cars if the Israeli deal weren’t scuttled.

…

Robinson III—a Morgan alumnus who’d been an assistant to Tom Gates when he was chairman in the 1960s—turned to the bank to finance the takeover. At first, Robinson thought he could arrange a friendly merger. Instead, he touched off a furious reaction from Harold W. McGraw, Jr., who called in Yerger Johnstone of Morgan Stanley and defense lawyer Martin Lipton and unleashed a blistering counterattack.
McGraw picked up any brickbat at hand. He sued American Express for libel, said it cooperated with the Arab boycott of Israel, asked the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Trade Commission to study antitrust problems, chastised American Express as a menace to the First Amendment, and raised a dozen other issues, bogus and legitimate. In the ultimate slap, McGraw chided American Express for not paying interest on the float from its traveler’s checks.
American Express had planned to borrow $700 million for the merger, with Morgan Guaranty as lead banker.

pages: 409words: 118,448

An Extraordinary Time: The End of the Postwar Boom and the Return of the Ordinary Economy
by
Marc Levinson

Gas lines, clogged with drivers desperate to top off nearly full tanks while the precious liquid was still available, symbolized the collapse of the American dream.
The oil shock upset the equilibrium in Canada, setting off a boom in oil-rich Alberta while crippling import-dependent Quebec. The reverberations were even more disquieting in Japan. As petroleum prices rose through 1973, the Japanese did not anticipate serious trouble; their country had little engagement with the Middle East, and many Japanese companies had even complied with the Arab boycott against Israel. But Japan’s neutrality in Middle Eastern affairs did not spare it from pain when oil prices spiked. The Japanese did not block highways or threaten gas station attendants, but anxiety over the end of cheap petroleum ran very deep: every drop used to fuel Japan’s huge industrial base was imported. As the government slashed its economic growth forecast by half, it rationed oil and electricity to factories and instructed families to extinguish the pilot lights on their water heaters.3
As tumultuous as it was, the shock was short-lived.

The real villain according to Index was not the murderer but van Gogh, a ‘free-speech fundamentalist’ who had incited his own murder when he went on a ‘martyrdom operation’ and ‘roared his Muslim critics into silence with obscenities’. The Independent and New Statesman produced neo-Nazi iconography, while an article reprinted by the London Review of Books won the praise of a former leader of the Ku Klux Klan for explaining that a Jewish ‘Lobby’ controlled American foreign policy. The Church of England’s General Synod, university lecturers and architects called for boycotts of Israel and none of them felt the need to explain why they didn’t demand boycotts of states which had committed far greater crimes against humanity, up to and including genocide. When you asked them why they were singling out Jews for special treatment, they cried that the Jews always said that criticism of Israel was ‘antisemitic’, even though no serious scholar, journalist, Jewish organization or Israeli politician did anything of the sort.

But with this kind of faucet you always have to consider when to turn it on: it’s easier to turn on than off.”149 The battle of American Jews against Coca-Cola was, he felt, one example of the troublesome faucet.
Moshe Bornstein, a Holocaust survivor, was the owner of the Israeli beverage company Tempo, and had been trying for years to win the Israeli franchise to make Coca-Cola. The company had repeatedly turned him down, apparently fearing that manufacturing the beverage in Israel would lead to its boycott in Arab countries.* Israel and Jewish organizations in America consistently fought against the Arab commercial boycott, and Israel even kept a special consul in New York specifically for that purpose. In 1966 the consul was the journalist Yuval Elitzur, a writer for Maariv. Elitzur frequently worked with Arnold Forster, an official of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, who, as Elitzur described, launched an initiative called “Operation Coca-Cola.” When the company repeated its refusal to grant Bornstein the franchise, Forster went to the U.S. press; before long, a “counter boycott” was under way among American Jews; they probably switched to Pepsi.

The Labor Zionist leadership had led the Jewish people through the twentieth century, remained steady through war and siege and terrorism, through waves of mass immigration and economic devastation. Until now. How had the pioneer statesmen and their hero generals become so complacent, so arrogant, that they had failed to notice the growing strength of Arab armies and the prewar buildup on the borders?
The world had never seemed to Israelis a more hostile place than it did in late October 1973. The Arab oil boycott, which punished pro-Israel countries with a suspension of oil deliveries, pressured Third World countries to sever relations with the Jewish state, while panicked European governments suddenly discovered the Palestinian cause. Only two countries—the United States and Holland—stood with Israel. And who knew for how much longer? The whole world is against us, Israelis told each other. This fatalism about “the world” was a negation of Zionism, which had aimed to restore the Jews not only to Zion but to the community of nations.

…

If we don’t achieve a more tangible victory than a fictitious work camp in Ofra, they said, the movement will lose its momentum, its chance to change history.
AND THEN, UNEXPECTEDLY, Gush Emunim received a gift.
On November 10, 1975, the UN General Assembly voted, 72 to 35, with 32 abstentions, to declare Zionism a form of racism. The resolution, initiated by Arab nations and endorsed by the Soviet and Muslim blocs, was the culminating moment of the growing Arab success, impelled by the oil boycott, to isolate Israel. Sitting in solemn assembly, the UN in effect declared that, of all the world’s national movements, only Zionism—whose factions ranged from Marxist to capitalist, expansionist to conciliatory, clericalist to ultrasecular—was by its very nature evil. The state of the Jews, the Israeli political philosopher J. L. Talmon noted bitterly, had become the Jew of the states.
Addressing the General Assembly, Israel’s UN ambassador, Chaim Herzog, noted that the resolution had been passed on the anniversary of Kristallnacht, the night of broken glass, the Nazi pogrom that in effect began the Holocaust.

Netanyahu said his Bar Ilan address last June [where he outlined his conditions for Palestinian statehood] had been difficult for him, but it had united Israelis in support of accepting a demilitarized Palestinian state. The current GOI had also restrained construction in settlements more than its past several predecessors.
Netanyahu then contrasted his efforts with the PA, which he said is maintaining a “political and economic boycott” of Israel, setting preconditions for negotiations, supporting the Goldstone Report in the UN, and is now talking about a unilateral declaration of independence. Israel wants to engage, but the Palestinians do not. [09TELAVIV2777]
Of course, Netanyahu repeatedly demonstrated the limits of his own willingness to engage core Palestinian demands. According to a 2007 cable, for example, when he was still opposition leader, Netanyahu told visiting US officials that he would judge the seriousness of Palestinian intentions by their willingness to relinquish the right of return for Palestinian refugees: “Netanyahu noted that he thought dropping the ‘right of return’ was the acid test of Arab intentions and insisted that he would never allow a single Palestinian refugee to return to Israel” [07TELAVIV1114].

But then, in an address to the Mapai leadership, the same Eshkol could also warn: “We are surrounded by a serious encirclement of hostility and that which doesn’t succeed today could well succeed tomorrow or the day after. We know that the Arab world is now divided in half…but things can always change.”66
THE CRISIS
Two Weeks in May
In the face of Arab and UN Condemnations and boycotts by Western ambassadors, Israel marked its independence. The parade had been pared down to a mere twenty-six minutes, 1,600 soldiers and a few vehicles—“a boy scouts march,” Colonel Lior derided it. Eshkol’s decision to put the lowest possible profile on the celebrations elicited bitter criticism from his opponents, most vocally Ben-Gurion, who accused him of kowtowing to international pressure. And yet some 200,000 spectators turned out for the event, gathering under an illuminated Star of David that shimmered from the top of Mt.

…

Converging on Sinai were military contingents from countries that only days before had regarded Egypt as a mortal enemy, from Morocco and Libya, Saudi Arabia and Tunisia. Even the Syrians finally relented and agreed to send a brigade to fight alongside the Iraqis in Jordan. Combined, the Arab armies could field 900 combat aircraft, over 5,000 tanks, and a half million men. Added to this was immense political might. Arab oil producers had agreed to boycott any countries that assisted Israel, to nationalize their refineries and even destroy their pipelines. The Suez Canal, warned Nasser, could be blocked. Arabs across North Africa, throughout the Fertile Crescent and the Gulf, felt bound by a single, exalted effort, as expressed by President ‘Aref of Iraq: “Our goal is clear—to wipe Israel off the face of the map. We shall, God willing, meet in Tel Aviv and Haifa.”61
The Shortest Night
The night of June 3-4, found the president of the United States in New York, attending a Democratic party fundraiser.

I watched the future Iraqi leader carefully, and when his eyes briefly met mine I noted a kind of contempt in them, something supercilious. This was not, I thought, a man who had much faith in conferences.
And he was right. The Saudis made sure that they didn’t anger the United States, and after three days of deliberation the Arab mountain gave forth a mouse. Egypt would be put under an economic boycott—just like Israel—and a committee would be dispatched to Cairo to try to persuade Sadat to renounce Camp David. To sweeten the deal, they were to offer him $7 billion annually for the next ten years to support Egypt’s bankrupt economy. The unenviable task of leading this forlorn delegation to Cairo fell, rather sadly, to Selim el-Hoss, the prime minister of Lebanon whose own war-battered country was then more deeply divided than the Arab world itself.

…

“If the Israelis refuse to accept this,” al-Sharaa said to me privately, “then we could demand Arab flags and sovereignty over Israeli Arab villages inside Israel.” But the Syrians could also be uncompromising. They would not accept what the Americans called “confidence-building measures”—the presence of military observers, an end to propaganda campaigns—before the start of Israeli withdrawal from occupied Arab land. There would be no end to the Arab economic boycott of Israel and no agreements on water resources until the Israelis had undertaken “a comprehensive withdrawal from occupied territories.”
In their private discussions with the Americans, the Syrians had also insisted that they would negotiate on the Palestinian question as well as on Golan in order to prevent the Israelis exploiting what Damascus feared was the weakest Arab team at the conference, the joint Jordanian–Palestinian delegation.

* * *
*1 Similarly, in September 2015, British Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne became the first British minister to visit China’s restive, Muslim-populated Xinjiang province, where he lobbied on behalf of British businesses for deals in industrial parks catering to the emerging Eurasian Silk Roads.
*2 Coca-Cola is the market leader in Iran as well. Sold by Coke’s Irish subsidiary, it is bottled by the local joint venture partner Khoshgovar.
*3 Similarly, for every European country that launches a boycott, divestment, and sanctions initiative against Israel on behalf of the Palestinians, some hedge fund or Chinese construction company launches a new investment with it.
*4 Though Ukraine lost Crimea, it still controls Crimea’s electricity supply. A series of attacks by Ukranians on power transmission lines in November 2015 plunged Crimea into darkness.
*5 North Stream stretches from Vyborg on the Gulf of Finland to Greifswald in Germany near the Polish border.

It was Kissinger’s impression that the Egyptians were leaving an opening for border adjustments on the West Bank and even for an Israeli presence along the Jordan River, aimed at preventing any Arab army from linking up with the West Bank. Once Israel declared its readiness for a pullback, said Ismail, demilitarized zones would be created on both sides of the Israeli-Egyptian border. Israeli vessels would be permitted to use the Suez Canal and Egypt would end its boycott of companies trading with Israel. There would, however, not be diplomatic relations or open borders. This would have to await an Israeli settlement with Syria (including full withdrawal from the Golan Heights), Jordan, and the Palestinians. Arab control of East Jerusalem and the Temple Mount was nonnegotiable.
Kissinger was skeptical about Israel agreeing to these terms, even though they were far better than anything any Arab state had yet offered.

The soldiers took care not to drop
ashes on the rug, and when school papers for mathematics and physics
homework were found, Hananel, himself a chemist, brought them downstairs to the seventeen-year-old son of the family.
The troops had had nothing substantial to eat in two days, and commanders permitted their men to break into food shops. (Journalists were
to find shutters on jewelry shops and camera stores undisturbed.) The
most sought-after beverage was not spirits but Pepsi-Cola, which the
Arab boycott had succeeded in banning from Israel and which most of
the young Israelis had never tasted. In one grocery the starving men
wolfed down yogurt, smearing on their sooty faces a white harlequin
mask.
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Mopping Up 329
Occasionally, Arab hospitality surfaced even toward an occupying
army. When the brigade medical staff set up its forward aid station at a
villa near the museum, the men were greeted by the proprietor with
tea.